The conference featured 38 educational presentations including general sessions hosted by industry experts on managing projects, vendor compliance, improving information flow, and a discussion from the conference's major sponsor FedEx on customer segmentation and the delivery of goods. 25 technical breakout sessions tailored specifically to VendorNet's Dropship, Stock PO, and IT users provided in-depth training, and the ever popular daily hollow square discussions delivered a lively interactive forum for clients to share ideas and learn from their industry peers.
The conference was held in conjunction with the release of VendorNet Commerce Suite Version 4.2, which focuses heavily on improving supplier integration and compliance including new features to facilitate order/product labeling, ease-of-use for international vendors, international currency support, additional supplier interface options, and connectivity to distributors, fulfillment houses and multiple remote warehouses. Sharon Gardner, President of VendorNet drove home the vendor compliance theme in her opening remarks. "It's not coincidental that the conference had a distinct focus on vendor compliance. VendorNet's technology is largely about providing retailers with the tools that enable their suppliers to comply with retailer's standards in order to control costs, streamline operations, and improve profitability."
Dave Meyers, Director, Corporate Purchasing at Uline commented. "The conference overall was very impressive, particularly the sessions on vendor compliance. It's a hot topic for all of us in the catalog/distribution business. I left the conference armed with valuable new knowledge, and very eager to develop more uses for our implementation of VendorNet Stock PO Manager and to further leverage VendorNet's compliance tools."
In addition to receiving valuable training and networking at the conference, clients were recognized for outstanding VendorNet achievements completed in 2005 including:
The best judge of the success of a conference comes from the attendees. Teresa Smith, Director, Customer Care at Neiman Marcus summed it up. "This conference provided many opportunities for a free flow of ideas. Most interesting was the discussion on vendor compliance as well as the ability to email the ship-to customer with their order information. Both discussions provided me with additional ideas on how to further leverage VendorNet. The conference is a must for the new user, as well as the current user who may not realize there are features they haven't yet begun to use."